Q&A/Martina Robinson; Life That Shows Activism Has No Limits

By DONNA GREENE

Published: April 26, 1998

FOR several years now, Martina Robinson, a senior at Purchase College with cerebral palsy, has had these ideas spinning in her head on what she would like to present as her senior dramatics project.

She wondered how best to show the feelings that have been percolating within her for years about what it means -- and does not mean -- to be disabled.

This week, Ms. Robinson will get her chance when her play, ''And Still This Silence,'' is presented at the Humanities Theater in the Humanities Building at Purchase College. Written and directed by Ms. Robinson, it stars others from Purchase College and elsewhere, including disabled and able-bodied people.

The curtain will go up on Thursday at 7:30 and 10 P.M., Friday at 8 and 10 P.M. and next Saturday at 3 and 8 P.M. In addition, on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, there will be special performances for elementary, middle school and high school students at 9:30 and 11:45 A.M. Tickets range from $1 (at the children's shows) to a top of $4 at the regular shows. Reservations can be made by calling 251-7845. The building is accessible to the handicapped. Ms. Robinson is seeking to provide an interpreter for the deaf.

Ms. Robinson, 21, of Pennbrook, Pa., has a dual major of dramatic arts and anthropology. She uses a wheelchair, has a mild speech problem and has an attendant to help her in the morning. Other than that, she said, she believes she can do anything she wants. But there was, she said, a time when she thought her disability was a punishment from God. Here are excerpts from a recent conversation with her:

Q. Growing up and thinking you wanted to pursue dramatics, knowing you had a disability, how did you get to the point of saying, I can do it?

A. I always thought I could do anything as long as I tried hard enough. It never occurred to me that I couldn't do it; it occurred to other people that I couldn't do it. I've always been sort of a stubborn person.

Q. Were you born stubborn, or did the stubbornness develop because of other people's attitudes?

A. My mother said I was born stubborn. That's why I was born early -- because I was too impatient to wait for the time I was supposed to.

Q. Do you encounter people who think because you have a physical disability there is something wrong with your mind?

A. Oh, yes, people will sometimes talk to me like I'm 3. People, when I go to restaurants, don't tend to think I can order for myself.

Q. What is the purpose of your show?

A. This project had five different incarnations in my head over the last two and a half years. I worked on it that long. Originally, it was to be a play strictly about disability rights activism. That got too complicated and too strident for me, so it evolved and it evolved and it kept evolving to involve able-bodied people as well as disabled people. So now it's my comment on the state of relations between disabled people and able-bodied people, as they relate to activism.

Q. What is the show's message?

A. I'm trying to say that disabled people don't need to be like able-bodied people -- because we can't be. But we also don't need to completely ignore that, and everybody needs to get along and participate in struggling against each other's oppression -- whether it be racism, sexism, able-ism or homophobia or whatever else is going on in their life. Everybody has their own oppression. There are people of color in my show, there are gay people and bisexual people in my show and there are women in my show. We all have our own oppressions, and we all need to participate in each other's oppressions so we can liberate everyone and all be free and have a dialogue on how to change the power structure so we don't oppress anyone.

The show also comments on the fact that disabled people need to liberate themselves from a group tendency to just hang out with disabled people and not to associate with able-bodied people. By associating with both disabled and able-bodied people, you increase the people who can help you out with your fight against the oppression of being disabled or the oppression that disabled people have.

Disability itself is not an oppression any more than a skin color is. I mean, if everything were adapted to disabled people and you had an attendant who could help you get out of bed when you wanted to -- whatever -- you wouldn't mind being disabled.

Q. From your view, is it ignorance that has mostly caused discrimination against the disabled -- people feeling uncomfortable around them?

A. I think in the beginning a lot of it was ignorance, and a lot of it still is. But I really do think that a lot of people resent disabled people because they have laws about them. It's like some people's attitudes toward blacks after civil rights, resenting them because there were laws saying, No, you can't say these people can't come in.

Q. So if a special staircase is created for a particular employee, people might say why spend the money? Get someone else.

A. Yes. Or why put guardrails in the bathroom? Or why does my little art's theater need to be accessible so one person every six months can come? They don't see that once it's accessible more people might come and bring their friends.

Q. Have you had to have some special accommodations in the theater for you?

A. No, not in the theater. But in the school they had to make the doors open electrically.

Q. How have you dealt with steps? Are there elevators where you need them?